


In A Dream

by juiceboxjellyfish



Series: Carry On Countdown 2017 [5]
Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Carry On Countdown (Simon Snow), Dreams, Entering Dreams, Fluff, M/M, Simon's POV, SnowBaz, seriously, simon fucks up, simon should learn to listen to penny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 08:39:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12860880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juiceboxjellyfish/pseuds/juiceboxjellyfish
Summary: After hearing him sleep-talk, Simon enters Baz's dreams convinced that he's plotting against him. It backfires when he sees something he really shouldn't have seen.





	In A Dream

Baz has been mumbling my name in his sleep. At first I thought I was imagining it, but then it happened agin the next night and the night after that. What could he possibly be plotting that takes up so much of his time that he’s dreaming about it? It’s something evil, I’m sure of it. It’s been going on for quite a while too, and I’ve become very jumpy around him. Whenever he speaks to me or approaches me in any way, I’m convinced he’s about to put his plan into action, and it’s terrifying. I could die at any time! 

When I speak to Penny about it she tells me I’m paranoid. She says that I’m imagining things, and that Baz wouldn't kill me on campus anyway because the Mage is here and besides, we’re in the eight year now and plotting against your roommate is immature. Then she says that even if Baz did say my name in his sleep, it still doesn't necessarily have to mean that he’s plotting against me.  
I ignore her. She might be right a lot of the time, but I swear Baz muttered my name, and nothing can convince me otherwise. 

I look over at Baz in his bed. He’s fallen asleep now, and hopefully he will have the same dream tonight as well. I want to make absolutely sure that he is saying my name before I talk to Penny about it again. So I watch him sleep. Just as I’m about to give up, I hear him mutter something. I hurry over to his bed as silently as I can, but I still miss the beginning of the sentence. The end, however, is clear as day.  
“Simon” he mumbles. Then he turns over on his side and mumbles something that’s barely audible. The triumphant feeling makes me want to go to Penny’s room right now and tell her I was right, but I know I can’t get in to the girls’ dorms anyway, so I go back to bed. I’m going to tell Penny about my plan first thing tomorrow morning. 

When I sit down at breakfast, Penny is already there.  
“Hey Pen, are there any spells that let you enter someone else’s dreams?” I ask, trying to sound casual. She puts her toast down.  
“No Simon, I’m not going to help you spy on Baz.”  
“He’s dreaming about me! If I don’t find out what he’s planning I might die!”  
“I really don’t think so, Simon. Besides, spying on people’s dreams is unethical.”  
“Unethical? This is Baz we’re talking about! Who cares about unethical?”  
“Well if we don’t, aren’t we just sinking to his level?”  
She goes back to her toast, as if that was the end of the discussion.  
“If you don’t help me enter his dreams, I’ll try to do it by myself and probably blow his head off in the process. Then we can talk about unethical!”  
Penny looks at me like I'm crazy.  
“Crowley Simon, that’s a little bit far… But knowing you, it’s not unlikely at all.”  
“Does that mean you’ll help me?”  
“I really don’t like it, but invading Baz’s privacy is better than accidentally causing serious injuries to his brain so yes, I will help you.”

Penny starts practicing the spell on me. She casts a sleeping spell on me to save time, and when I wake up she tells me what she saw in my dreams and I tell her if she’s right, so she knows how well it’s working. She says my nightmares are deeply concerning, and that she doesn’t understand how I can even fall asleep at night. I don’t tell her that I usually can’t.  
When she’s gotten the spell to work perfectly for herself, she somehow gets Agatha to agree to try and step inside my dreams. It works, so we decide to put our plan into action that night.

“Okay Simon, don’t stay in there any longer than you have to. Don’t interact with his dream, that might wake him up. If he’s not dreaming about you, get out of there. Please don’t invade his privacy more than what’s necessary. Leaving the dream is simple, you just have to decide to leave. I’m going to break the spell after five minutes and then I won’t do it again, because I still think this is wrong. If Baz wakes up I’m running, and you’ll have the great joy of explaining what the hell you’re doing all to yourself. Okay?”  
Penny has told me all of these instructions several times before, but she whispers them to me again when we meet up outside my door. I tried to get her to change the five minute thing, but she wouldn't budge.  
“Okay Pen, I’ve got it. Anyway I’m sure he’s asleep now, let’s go.”  
Penny hesitates for a second, but then sneaks in to the room with me. She points her ring to the sleeping Baz, grabs my hand and whispers “I dreamed a dream”.  
Suddenly the both of us are standing in a completely different environment.  
“Bye Simon” she whispers. “I have no interest in this.” Then she disappears in a small cloud of smoke, leaving me alone in Baz’s dreamworld.

I’m in a castle, but it’s not Watford. I don’t know if it’s a specific castle or just a generic dream castle, but it looks very fancy. I’m right in front of a door, so I open it and sneak in. Inside is a great hall with stained glass windows. Rows of benches are lined up next to the walls, and people everywhere are dressed in fancy clothes. The people are mostly Watford students, but there are also some people who look like they could be related to Baz. It looks like a wedding is going on, but I can’t tell from back here who’s getting married. I sit down in a bench pretty far back in the hall, trying not to draw any attention to myself, but I suppose the people aren’t real, so I don’t have to worry until I see Baz. Once I’m hidden amongst the imaginary Watford students, I look at the soon to be wed couple. I’m surprised to see myself standing at the altar, opposite a girl with long blonde hair. Agatha? Why is Baz dreaming about my wedding? Is he planning to ruin my wedding? That seems a bit weird, especially since I’m not with Agatha anymore, so my wedding is probably quite far away if I’ll even get to have one.  
Maybe Baz is going to a wedding soon, and those thoughts have gotten mixed up with his plot against me. Dreams can be a bit weird. Where is Baz anyway? I don’t see him anywhere in the audience, and the wedding ceremony is already pretty far along. Dream-Agatha and dream-me haven’t said their vows yet, but if I know anything about weddings, we’re getting to that part pretty soon.  
“If anyone has any objections, speak up now or stay silent forever” the priest says, and I’m pretty sure that’s usually right before the vows. He’s just about to continue when the door slams open and Baz runs in. He stops at the row in front of me, when he’s sure everyone can see and hear him.  
“I object!” he shouts, and dream-me turns around, along with everyone else in the room. For a moment I think that Baz is about to steal dream-Agatha from dream-me, but that moment ends very abruptly when dream-me shouts “Baz!” and starts running down the aisle.  
“Simon!” Baz yells, and starts running to meet dream-me. They collide about halfway down the aisle, and Baz lifts dream-me off his feet, spinning him around. Then their lips crash together in the kind of show stopping kiss you only see in movies, completely ignoring the chaos their reunion is causing. My stomach feels like it’s been turned inside out, and I just want to leave. I close my eyes and direct all my focus on leaving the dream, and when I open them again I’m standing opposite Penny in my dark bedroom.

“Simon?” she whispers. “Are you okay? You look really pale.”  
I ignore the hand she places on my shoulder as comfort. My throat feels like it’s closing up, and my stomach is twisting around in me.  
“I have to go” I say, so quietly it’s barely audible. Penny furrows her brow.  
“What do you mean you have to-“ I walk past her.  
“I can’t stay here. I need to go” I say, barely aware that I’m talking.  
“Simon, where are you going? What did you see? Simon!” Penny is whispering as loudly as she can without risking to wake Baz, and I’m sure she would call out after me in any other situation. I leave anyway, hurrying down the stairs and out on the lawn. I hide from Penny when she leaves Mummers House to look for me. I can’t talk to her right now.

I somehow end up right outside the wavering woods. I sit down and rest my back against a tree, gasping for fresh air. I feel like I’m going to throw up. Penny was right again. We shouldn’t have gone inside Baz’s dream. I feel dirty and horrible, like I’ve seen something not meant to be seen by anyone. And I have. What I witnessed in Baz’s dream wasn’t meant for anyone’s eyes but his, and least of all mine, and I watched all of it. I never thought I’d feel bad for Baz, but I feel horrible. I want to apologise, but if I do he’ll know that I know, and that would be awful for him. There’s nothing I can do to unsee what I’ve seen, and the thought of what I’ve done to Baz haunts me more than my nightmares. I don’t sleep at all, and I don’t even go inside again for the rest of the night. 

The sun is starting to rise, casting a pale light over everything. After spending all night walking around in circles on the lawn and trying to process what I’ve done and what I’ve witnessed, I still don’t know what to do. I sit back down in the grass, and the dew makes my pyjama pants wet. I don’t care. After trying to avoid it all night, I finally allow myself to think about what actually happened in the dream. I thought Baz was plotting my downfall, but he was dreaming about crashing in to my wedding and stopping it, and it wasn’t to ruin it for me. It was for love. Baz dreams about me, about us, like we were the leads of an epic romance movie. The thought makes my stomach twist in a different way than it has been since I first saw the dream.  
That kiss as well… Ignoring the fact that I shouldn't have seen it, it was a cinematic masterpiece. The fact that it was so passionate and clearly something he’d imagined before makes my stomach turn in the bad way again.  
I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be in love with your arch enemy, especially if said arch enemy was your roommate. I can’t help but wonder if he’s known about this for a long time, and the thought of a young Baz crying over me is like a stab in the heart. I don’t know why I suddenly care so much about Baz after spending years going against him. Maybe it’s just easier to sympathise with him when I know more of his side of the story.

Once again I try to imagine what being in love with someone who’s supposed to be your enemy would feel like. I suppose it would take a while to figure it out. There would probably be a long period of denial, because your arch enemy/roommate is definitely the last person you’d want to fall in love with. You would tell yourself that you were only thinking about him because you’re enemies and you need to know what he’s up to. Everything about him would be frustrating, and you’d tell yourself that it was hatred but deep down you’d probably know what was really going on….  
And suddenly I realise why it’s so easy for me to sympathise with Baz.

I need to apologise. I need to face the consequences of my actions, even if it means that Baz hates me forever. The guilt is eating me alive, and I know that it will be even worse if I lie about it. For probably the thousandth time, I wish I’d listened to Penny and thought things through before doing them. Penny! I need to talk to Penny, she must be worried sick about me! 

I find Penny outside my bedroom door. She’s fallen asleep with her back resting against the wall, but it can’t have been long ago because she has dark circles under her eyes as if she hadn’t slept at all. She must have been waiting for me to come back. I lightly place my hand on her shoulder, and she immediately jerks awake.  
“Simon?” she says, and I put a finger to my lips to shush her.  
“Where were you?” she whispers, and I help her up from the floor.  
“We need to talk” I say, and we walk down the stairs.

We walk aimlessly across the Great Lawn, and then sit down in the grass.  
“So, where did you go? What happened?” Penny asks. She looks so incredibly tired, and I feel really bad for making her wait for me. Tonight hasn't exactly been the best night of my life.  
“Well, you were right. He wasn’t dreaming about plotting my downfall, and we shouldn't have went inside his dream. I saw something I really shouldn’t have seen, something that isn’t anybody’s business but Baz’s. And I felt horrible. I couldn’t breathe in there, I needed to clear my mind and figure out what to do. I shouldn’t just have run off though, I’m sorry that I hid from you.”  
Penny doesn’t say anything, she just looks at me. It’s not even a triumphant “what did I say”-look, she’s just listening. So I continue.  
“I’m obviously not going to tell you what I saw, but it was about as private as it gets. It wasn’t anything bad, so don’t get the idea that I discovered some deep dark secret that proves he’s evil, it was just something that was absolutely none of my business. I felt so bad. I still feel so bad. I had no right whatsoever to see that. So I have to apologise to him.”  
I pause, expecting Penny to contribute her opinion, but she still doesn't say anything.  
“I’ll leave you out of it since you told me not to do it, but I have to tell Baz what I did and what I saw, and I have to apologise. It won’t change anything, but it’s the right thing to do. If Baz didn’t hate me before, he will now” I say, and I feel a sting in my heart. I wish things had worked out differently.  
For the first time since I started my explanation, Penny speaks.  
“Yeah, I think you’re right. Though you don’t have to leave me out of it, I did help you. I wish I’d refused.”

Baz is getting ready when I return to the room.  
“Wow Snow, you look horrible” he says. “Have you been on some errand for the Mage all night?”  
Right now I would give anything for our lives to stay like this, for Baz to only hate me because he has to, and not because I’ve earned it.  
“Actually Baz, we need to talk. I’ve done something horrible. Please sit down.”  
He looks confused and worried, but sits down anyway.  
“What did you do Snow?”  
“First off I want you to know that I don’t think this apology will fix anything. I’m not doing this to feel better about myself, but because I feel like you deserve to know. I’m really sorry.”  
He doesn’t respond, he just looks even more confused.  
“I suppose it started a few weeks ago. You were talking in your sleep and you… You said my name. Or at least I thought you did.” His eyes fill with panic, but he tries to look unaffected.  
“So I… I thought you were, uhm, plotting against me and that you were… That you were dreaming about it. So I decided to do something very stupid and unethical, because I thought you might kill me at any moment. That’s not an excuse, that’s just an… an explanation. So I learned a spell that lets you enter someone else’s dream and… I went inside your head. Tonight.”’  
For a moment he looks thoughtful, and then he suddenly remembers his dream and the utter panic on his face brings back the nausea from right after I firsts saw his dream.  
“And I saw something that was none of my business and that I really had no right to see, and I feel absolutely horrible that I did what I did and I don't expect you to forgive me, but I wanted to be honest with you. If there was a way for me to unsee it, I would. I hate that I found out like this. Sorry.”  
It’s impossible to know what’s going through Baz’s mind right now. I have no idea what I would be thinking if the roles were reversed, but I don’t think it would be good.  
Baz gets up and leaves. 

I stay on my bed until he gets back. I don’t want to run in to him before he’s had the time to think things through, and I deserve whatever he decides to do to me. He’s gone for hours and hours, but so was I so I don’t question it. 

Baz returns in the afternoon. I expect him to be furious, but he mostly just looks tired. He sits down on his bed and looks at me.  
“So you saw the wedding dream?” he asks, almost in a sigh.  
“Yeah” I respond. I don’t know what else to say. Baz pulls his hand trough his hair and takes a deep breath.  
“I guess there’s no use in hiding it anymore then. If you saw that, then you must have figured out that I’m a little bit… hopelessly in love with you. I’m honestly surprised you haven’t punished me for it.”  
“Aren’t you mad about it?”  
“Oh yes Snow, I’m very mad about it. You invaded my privacy, and you saw things that are very personal to me. Things that I’ve told… Let’s see… Nobody. I’m fucking furious. And I’m panicking, because nobody’s supposed to know about that, but most of all, I’m just surprised about your reaction. Because you see, every time I’ve imagined you finding out, I’ve thought you’d be furious.  
And yes, what you did was awful.”  
“Yeah.”  
“Unethical.”  
“Absolutely.”  
“Unfair.”  
“Definitely.”  
“But you’re owning up to it. You realised that you fucked up, and you’re telling me. And that doesn’t excuse your dickhead behaviour, but at least it shows that you do have human decency somewhere. Now my only question is why you’re not mad at me, or weirded out, or using this against me. Because if you were a dick about it, at least I could hate you. Now you’re just confusing me. Why aren’t you mad?”  
I’m completely baffled. I thought he’d kill me.  
“Why would I be mad? You’re in love, there’s nothing wrong with that! In fact, I felt really bad for you.”  
“You did?”  
“Yeah, and I know I’ve fucked everything up now, but seeing that dream made me realise that I love you too. I just wish I could’ve realised that sooner, without invading your privacy and giving you every right to hate my guts. I’m really sorry. You have no reason to trust me, but I promise I won’t bother you any more now. I’ll stay out of your way and I’ll avoid any conversation with you unless you want to initiate one.”  
And with that, it’s over. Baz leaves for breakfast without saying anything, and I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. My sleep is haunted by nightmares and dreams about Baz, and i’m not sure which is worse.

Weeks and weeks pass without me saying a single word to Baz. It hurts to look at him, but I keep my promise. I’m sleeping less and less, and Penny is worried about me. She keeps asking me what’s wrong, but I avoid the question. A whole month has passed since the incident when she finally gets it out of me. We’re laying on the Great Lawn looking at clouds when we’re supposed to be studying, and she asks me again what’s wrong. She sounds genuinely worried and I decide to tell her. After looking around to make sure no-one can hear us, I confess.  
“After going in to Baz’s dream I figured out that I’m in love with him, and I kind of lost all his trust, if he ever trusted me at all, when I told him I’d invaded his privacy like that. So that love is completely hopeless.” I expect Penny to be shocked that I’m in love with Baz, but if she is she hides it well.  
“Wow. That does suck” she says. Then she sits up and pulls me up into a hug.  
“I’m sorry I helped you do that” she mumbles.  
“It’s not your fault. I made you help me.”  
“I know, but still.”

After three months, Baz walks in to our room when I’m studying. I try my best to pretend he’s not there, but he walks up to me.  
“I’ve decided I can trust you again” he declares, and I allow myself to face him. I can’t understand that I ever thought I hated his face, it’s painfully beautiful.  
“You’re allowed to talk. I initiated the conversation” he says with a soft smile.  
“Oh. Why have you decided to trust me?” I ask silently.  
“You haven’t said a word to me in three months because of a promise you made when you were sleep deprived and confused. You admitted to the bad things you did, and you dealt with the consequences. You told me about your feelings even though you had no hope for anything good to come out of it. So if you haven’t decided to hate me since the last time we spoke, I’m ready to start again.”  
It’s clear that he’s thought all of this through and isn't just acting on impulse like I so often do.  
“So you really trust me now?” I ask him.  
“Yeah, I do. And besides. I really really want to be with you. Can we start again, maybe not as enemies this time?” he says, reaching his hand out to me. My stomach twists around in the good way, and I grab his hand. A wide smile spreads across his face and I can feel my cheeks heat up.  
He pulls me up on my feet and into his arms. Our faces are so close together that I can feel his breath, and I let him close the gap between us. When our lips meet in a soft but passionate kiss, I feel warm tears rolling down my face. Baz pulls away and looks at me.  
“Are you okay?” he asks, and I nod.  
“I was convinced I’d have to live the rest of my life without you. I’ve never been this relieved about anything before. Sorry I’m such a mess.”  
Baz is smiling from ear to ear.  
“Simon, I’ve known you since you were eleven. I know that you’re a mess, and I’ve been in love with you for years.” He wipes my tears away and then kisses me again, and I never want him to stop.

**Author's Note:**

> So that was long  
> Thank you for reading all of it! Please tell me what you thought in the comments, I really appreciate it! 
> 
> Seriously please please please comment I love comments they make me so happy
> 
> Also, tomorrow is angst day... Get ready >:)


End file.
